Mayor Mike Rawlings is calling for the creation of a cross-jurisdictional government agency — "like DART" — that would focus solely on solving Dallas' homeless crisis.

He has not publicly pushed for such an entity before.

But he said Wednesday in an interview with The Dallas Morning News that if the city, county, state and other government agencies buy in, and if it's well-funded, "​t​hat's the way we solve this issue​."

Rawlings said the proposal will be formally presented in coming weeks, when his homelessness commission presents its final report and recommendations to the City Council.

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The mayor formed the 40-member Dallas Commission on Homelessness in May to create short- and long-term plans to move people off the streets in the wake of the closure of Tent City, a sprawling homeless encampment under Interstate 45 that was once home to nearly 300 people.

Since then, other tent villages throughout the city have grown. Affordable housing is limited and many of the city's shelters are full. People aren't quickly moving off the streets, into shelters and then later into transitional or permanent housing, leaving many homeless for months or even years.

Commission members have said they want to see a permanent, formalized committee tackling the city’s homeless problem, though an intergovernmental agency hasn’t been widely discussed.

The commission is scheduled to have its final meeting Oct. 18, and its final report will be finished by the end of the month. A similar group worked on a long-term homeless plan 10 years ago but a permanent commission was never established.

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The group is faced with a fragmented nonprofit system that assists homeless people and limited buy-in from city leaders. Council members did recently approve adding $1 million to the city's housing budget to hire more caseworkers to pair homeless people with shelters.

The group's chair, Britton Banowsky, said it's important for there to be "some ongoing structural oversight so we can deal with this for the next decade."

"We don't have an authority across local government here to address" homelessness, he said.

Sam Merten, COO of The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, in the courtyard of the downtown facility on Corsicana Street

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(Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)

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People wait in line at the welcome building inside The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center on Corsicana Street in downtown Dallas.

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(Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)

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Banowsky said creating such an agency will be part of the commission's final recommendation to the council, though details on how it would be funded have not been finalized. Dallas Area Rapid Transit is funded with a one-cent local sales tax collected from 13 member cities.

Rawlings said he’s in the early stages of setting up meetings to figure out how to draft an agreement and identify funding.

How to fund a new agency will be the multimillion-dollar question as the city struggles with getting thousands of homeless people off the streets, out of encampments and into temporary shelters and permanent supportive housing.

Such an agency will need buy-in from other government entities, such as Dallas County.

County Judge Clay Jenkins said he and Rawlings haven't had substantive discussions concerning creation of a new group to deal with homelessness. But he said the county government is receptive to the concept, at least.

"I need to hear a little bit about those ideas," Jenkins said. "But we're open to discussing things."

Dallas does not fare well when compared to other cities for its handling of homelessness. The local "continuum of care" — government-speak for the organizations that work with homeless people — has lost $1.8 million this year in federal transitional housing funding because of low performance.

"We're a problem child," said Cindy Crain, president of Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, which handles federal homeless funding in Dallas and Collin counties.

Rawlings unveiled his proposal after a tense City Council meeting Wednesday during which several council members debated whether Dallas should delay turning over about $4 million in state funding meant to help the city's homeless population.

The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, Austin Street Shelter and CitySquare lobby in Austin for grant money from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

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Adam Medrano, a downtown council member whose district includes The Bridge, pulled the three items off the council's consent agenda just before the 9 a.m. meeting began.

Representatives from each agency rushed to City Hall to make their case, among them Sam Merten, chief operating officer at The Bridge, who said that if the city delays handing over its $1.8 million — almost a quarter of its annual operating budget — it would be "devastating."

"We're going to have to fire people, have to stop providing services to some of the folks who are the most vulnerable — people with mental illness and chemical dependency," Merten said. He said the delay would mean "more people on downtown streets."

But Medrano and colleague Philip Kingston, whose district also includes downtown, want to wait to hand over the state's money until the mayor's homelessness commission turns in its final report in October. Medrano and Kingston also called for creation of a permanent city homelessness commission.

Kingston said it would be prudent to wait to disperse the funds because the city's Housing Department is "vetting potential short- and intermediate-term homeless assistance facilities," among them the former Dawson State Jail on the Trinity River.

But other council members insisted they were holding up much-needed money that wasn't theirs to delay.

The argument quickly veered from the political to the personal.

Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, who represents northwest Dallas, said her colleagues were "playing political games with our homeless."

Rawlings intervened as council members began turning up the volume.

"We're doing something very bad to these homeless if we vote against this," he said. He implored the council to "do the right thing as human beings."

The council, minus Kingston and Medrano, eventually voted with the mayor. The funding was not delayed.

Kingston later said his vote to delay was directed toward The Bridge, the homeless shelter and recovery center whose construction was funded with $24 million in city bond money approved by voters a decade ago. The facility is near Dallas Farmers Market.

“The farmers market stakeholders don't feel like The Bridge is a very cooperative partner on the issues it causes in the area," Kingston said. "What the stakeholders will tell you is doing the same thing over and over isn't the answer."

When asked what kind of changes he would like to see at The Bridge, Kingston said, "First and foremost is location."

He said he would like the city-funded shelter moved out of downtown.

But Merten said moving The Bridge out of downtown wouldn’t keep homeless people from loitering in the streets near the Farmers Market. The Bridge is the only homeless facility near the city’s core that is open to people during the day.

Homeless people are “going to hang out in downtown,” Merten said. “That’s one of the biggest reasons we are here, and the location does make sense.”

The shelter has been looking at other locations in the city to expand its services so that it’s not solely based out of downtown.

And The Bridge’s chief executive officer, Jay Dunn, has been serving on the homelessness commission. He said the group has been asked to find a solution without any new resources.

“We’ve been asked to significantly address a problem without any additional tools,” Dunn said.

He said Rawlings’ proposal could work, but such an agency needs to have funding, like DART.

But solving the Dallas homeless problem through the commission hasn’t seemed as high a priority to city leaders as, say, the loose dog issue.

“Compared to the analysis that was done on the dog problem, it’s not comparable,” he said.